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Email marketing gets a bad rap. Countless companies send out a ludicrous number of emails on a daily basis with spammy subject lines such as “You’ve Been Selected! Get 20% Off Today Only!”. (I’m looking squarely in the direction of a large home furnishings company.)

What Are Marketing Automation Campaigns?

Marketing automation is a term that covers all marketing activities that are done automatically for you and your store.

Email is a great example of this because there a few types of email campaigns that make sense to send at all times. Since many of the emails that you can send will be largely the same, it makes sense to automate the process as much as possible.

Email marketing automation is also great because it lets you close the loop on the buyer sales process without having to do anything manually. Think about it this way… if you had to manually send an email to every buyer who doesn’t complete the checkout process, would you even do it? That’s where automation comes in. It takes the tedious tasks like cart abandonment and customer re-engagement and does all the work for you.

Why Use Mailchimp Automations?

We’re huge fans of Mailchimp, which does a fabulous job of integrating with Shopify and providing lots of automation options so that a lot of effective marketing can be done for you — while you focus on other growth initiatives.

We implement most of the email automations that Mailchimp has available, but there are a few that we make sure we implement for each and every store. Here are the email marketing automations that we setup in Mailchimp for every Shopify client.

From Mailchimp. These are the automations we typically setup for each Shopify store.

Product reviews can kick off a virtuous cycle of organic traffic growth, which leads to more reviews, and so on.

If you’re looking to add product reviews to your Shopify store then I recommend starting with Yotpo (starts at free, price increases with additional features). If you’re looking for a free solution then check out Shopify’s own product reviews app.

Using Mailchimp Automations to Get Product Reviews

This is one of the easier automations to setup because it’s just a single email.

Start by choosing the “Follow up on purchases” automation from the E-Commerce tab.

Then choose the name for your automation campaign. I suggest something like “Product Reviews”.

Choose the products you want your automation to fire on.

You’ll also want to choose the products that you want the automation to fire on. Usually you want to fire the automation on purchases for all products, but I can envision scenarios where you want to target specific products or categories only.

Then you’ll see the email sequence screen. This automation only has a single email.

The email sequence for the product reviews automation in Mailchimp

You will want to set the trigger to the number of days that it typically takes for your customers to receive their purchases. For example, if customers typically receive their goods 4 days after ordering then you may want to set the automation to fire after 6 days so that they will have time to use the product before getting your review request.

The actual email design is up to you and your brand. It also depends on the product review app/service that you use. It’s always a good idea to tell your customers how important it is for the community at large for them to leave honest reviews on your site.

#2 Win Back Previous Customers

Customer Re-engagement Campaign Strategies

Keeping previous customers engaged with your brand is one of the best ways to utilize Mailchimp automations. If a previous buyer hasn’t made a purchase in the last X days you can automatically email them with a list of your best-selling products, specific product recommendations based on their purchase history with your store, or even something more custom, such as seasonal products.

You’ll need to put a little thought into the actual content of the win back emails that you send. A lot of this depends on your brand and the types of products that you sell.

If you’re a company that has seasonal products then you might want to update the automations seasonally so that you’re always sending current products to customers.

If you tend to sell the same products throughout the year then it’s simpler and you can likely just keep the same email content year round.

How to Create Customer Re-engagement Campaigns in Mailchimp

To get started, choose “Win back lapsed customers” from the E-Commerce tab.

Then you’ll be presented with a sequence of 3 emails triggered at 120, 240, and 360 days after the most recent purchase. You can be more aggressive with these dates if you want, but I wouldn’t go less than 60 days between emails.

You’ll need to do the following for each of the 3 emails in the sequence.

Then you’ll get to the good stuff. Choose the “Sell Products” template.

Choose the Sell Products template

Once you’re inside the email editor, you’ll see a couple of new content blocks that you can drag into the email design. These are “Product Recommendations” and “Products”. Product Recommendations are recommendations made automatically based on the shopper’s previous purchases. The Products content block allows you to display either a list of best-selling products or specific products.

Then add your logos, customize the branding, and add some copy. All done.

#3 Improved Receipts

How Showing Product Recommendations in the Order Confirmation Email Can Boost Sales

Ah, the order confirmation email / receipt… the forgotten part of the email marketing ecosystem. Email receipts get a whopping 70% open rate, so you can’t afford to just take them for granted and go with out of the box receipts from Shopify.

Order confirmation emails are a fantastic place to promote additional products to shoppers. There’s never a better time to make product recommendations or push your best-sellers than right after a purchase has been made. Customer trust is typically very high at this point or they would not have made a purchase in the first place.

How To Add Product Recommendations to Shopify Order Confirmations in Mailchimp

This is one of the simpler automations to add, just because there aren’t quite as many options.

First, choose “Enable Order Notifications” from the E-Commerce tab. You’ll then be presented with a few different order update emails that you can send. I’m specifically talking about the “Order Confirmation” email here, but you can also send your product recommendations with the “Shipping Update” email.

Choose the Order Confirmation email to send customized product recommendations along with the receipt

When you edit the design for the Order Confirmation email you really only need to add your branding. The product recommendations are automatically included at the bottom of the email. Easy peasy.

Add your product recommendations, best sellers, or specific products, to the bottom of the order receipt email.

Be sure to turn off your regular receipts in Shopify. You don’t want to confuse customers with duplicate emails.

#4 Retargeting Customers Who Viewed A Product

The Cart Abandonment and Product Retargeting campaigns are very similar, but both are effective. There difference is that the retargeting campaign will send a recently viewed item to a potential buyer if they did not add the item to cart.

How to Create Product Retargeting Emails in Mailchimp

First, choose “Retarget Site Visitors” from the E-Commerce tab to create the new automation campaign.

Why You Should Use Mailchimp For Your Cart Abandonment Emails

Luckily, email automations that target abandoned carts work fairly well. They have been known to get great open rates of 44% with a 5% conversion rate. The 5% conversion rate is a very strong addition to any store’s base conversion rate.

Cart abandonment emails are an automation that every store should use. That’s why it’s a built-in feature in Shopify. Shopify’s feature does a good job, but as of now it’s a bit limited. I prefer to be a bit more aggressive with cart abandonment campaigns and send 3 emails instead of just 1. That’s where Mailchimp comes in.

Bonus Tip!: A couple of other cart abandonment services (outside of Mailchimp) are Jilt and Carts Guru. As your store grows you might want to look into these options and see if you can coax better conversion rates out of them.

How to Create a Cart Abandonment Series in Mailchimp

Choose “Recover Abandoned Carts” from the E-Commerce tab when you create a new automation.

Then, you’ll want to choose a series of emails versus just a single email. According to Mailchimp the series generates 75% more revenue than a single email.

Choosing a Series vs a single email is important

Then you’ll be presented with the 3 emails in the series. Emails go out 1 hour, 1 day, and 3 days after the cart is abandoned. I would stick with the default settings here.

The series contains 3 emails.

You’ll want to go through the follow process for each of the 3 emails in the series. Once you click Design Email you’ll be asked to enter the details about the email.

Enter in your usual email config

Then you’ll be asked to choose which template you want to use. There are 3 options here. My recommendation would be to start with the first template, “Abandoned Cart”, because it’s simple and doesn’t show product recommendations. However, this is definitely something that you’ll want to A/B test for your brand.

There are 3 possible templates to choose from. Start with the most basic template and gather data on it before you try the others.

Then you can add your logo, branding, and tweak the copy to finish up the campaign.

The cart abandonment template in Mailchimp

Conclusion

Email marketing is a critical portion of the ongoing digital marketing plans for any ecommerce company, but that doesn’t mean that you need to have someone spending several hours per week writing emails. You can have Mailchimp handle at least a portion of this workload with their automations. Set it and forget it (for the most part).

Are there other Mailchimp automations that you use religiously? Tell us about them in the comments!

I’m a firm believer in the power of ad testing. It’s widely accepted that actively-managed AdWords accounts outperform those that aren’t managed. Along with managing keywords and bids, one of the best ways I’ve found to improve returns over time is through the AdWords testing process that I’m going to outline here. It’s nothing complicated or revolutionary, but it’s rigorous, repeatable, and proven.

If you have an AdWords account then you should always be testing multiple ads.

Why Should You Test Ads in AdWords?

A continuous ad testing process is one of the best methods for long-term account improvement. Rigorous testing allows you to continually try new ad copy variations while retaining what has worked well for you in the past.

If you write 1 or 2 ads for each ad group during the campaign build-out but never revisit the ads or test new variations then you’re just assuming that you wrote the best possible ads the first time around, which is a very dangerous assumption, even for the most experience copywriters out there.

The Elements of an AdWords Search Ad

There are 4 primary elements that make up an AdWords ad. We’ll discuss them all here, in order of importance.

Here you can see all of the elements that make up an AdWords expanded text ad.

Headline 1

The first headline is typically the first thing that’s noticed by readers, so it’s no surprise that it has the biggest impact on CTR.

A good headline should succinctly tell readers what your product/service is all about. It should grab attention to encourage the reader to finish reading the rest of the ad, or at least Headline 2.

Headline 1 allows up to 30 characters.

Headline 2

The second headline most often contains a Call to Action. Headline 1 tells the reader about your product/service, and Headline 2 tells them what to do. In my opinion, the headlines collectively account for 65-75% of an ad’s effectiveness.

Some ideas for Headline 2:

Register Now For Your Demo

Signup For A Free Trial

Start Your Free Trial Today

Save 10% Today Only

Free Shipping Today Only

Reserve Your Spot

Only 3 Spots Left! Book Now

Headline 2 allows up to 30 characters.

Description

The Description is where you have a bit more room to expand on your product/service and tell why you’re different from the competition. There are countless ways to utilize the description. Some advertisers like to use this space to list features (typically in competitive markets where buyers are well-educated) while others like to describe how the product or service is best utilized.

Many readers will never look at your description and will decide whether or not to click on your ad based purely on the headlines.

The description allows up to 80 characters.

Display URL

The Display URL is the URL that is shown between the headlines and the description. It defaults to your homepage, but can be anything you want. The URL that you display does not have to be a working URL, only the final URL has to be a functional landing page on your site. That leaves the Display URL as a place to potentially include keywords

The Display URL is now split into 2 sections, and you can choose to use 0, 1, or 2 of those sections. Any of the following would be valid:

myurl.com

myurl.com / important-keyword

myurl.com / important-keyword / another-keyword

Each portion of the Display URL allows for 15 characters.

How to Use Labels For Ad Testing

AdWords labels are one of my favorite features, and I think they’re criminally underutilized. In every AdWords account I manage I setup 2 labels, “Ad – Champion” (usually on a yellow background) and “Ad – Challenger” (usually on a blue background).

The “Champion” ad is your current best performer, usually based on cost-per-conversion or CTR. This is the ad that your ad testing will be based on and will very often last through multiple testing cycles.

“Challenger” ads are those that are being testing against the “Champion”.

Examples of ad testing labels in practice

Usually you’ll have at least 3 ads running at a time, and having the labels in use and visible will help you quickly determine which ad is which so that you can see how the test is going. I always recommend setting up a custom set of columns in AdWords and putting the label as close to the beginning as possible.

These are the first few columns that I typically have visible on the Ads page

Ad Testing Ideas

There are countless things that you could try in your ad testing. However, I’ve narrowed down my approach over time and generally have a good idea of the types of test that I’ll want to run. The following is a long list of ideas and things to test. They may not all apply to your specific use case, so feel free to pick and chose what makes the most sense for you.

Try a CTA as headline 1

Try a CTA at the end of headline 2

Try the brand name as headline 2

Try a CTA in the display url. Something like domain.com / free-demo or domain.com / register.

Try switching headline 1 and headline 2

If you’re promoting a service, try a short value proposition in headline 1. If your value prop is too long then make it the description and use a keyword in headline 1.

Running an Ad Test

The ad testing methodology we use at Deep Field is pretty straightforward. I recommend testing 3-4 ad variations at any given time, depending on the amount of clicks that you’re getting. If you’re getting a few hundred clicks per month then feel free to go with 4 variations, otherwise I’d stick with 3.

Setup for testing 3 variations (1 champion and 2 challengers):

1 champion ad, unchanged from previous round of testing

1 challenger ad that is a slight variation from the champion. Pick 1 element to modify and test

1 challenger ad that is completely new and different from the champion. This is where you test new ad copy and headlines

Setup for testing 4 variations (1 champion and 3 challengers):

1 champion ad, unchanged from previous round of testing

2 challenger ads that are slight variations from the champion. Pick 1 element to modify and test on each ad

1 challenger ad that is completely new and different from the champion. This is where you test new ad copy and headlines

If this is your first time ad testing then just create 3 different ads, don’t worry about labels, and see which one wins.

Be sure to put the appropriate labels in place and then let the ads runs for at least 2 weeks. If you get a significant amount of clicks and can tell within3 days which ad will when then feel free to speed up your testing cycle. However, it’s absolutely critical that you have enough data to make wise decisions. Just because a new ad is outperforming the champion 2-1 early on doesn’t mean that the performance will continue indefinitely. Don’t rush the process!

At the end of your testing cycle, choose your champion, pause the other ads, and create new challengers. Rinse and repeat. Over time you should see improvements in conversion rates, clickthrough rates, and maybe even a decrease in CPC for the same position.

Note: it’s important that you have your ads set to “Rotate Evenly” in your campaign settings, otherwise AdWords will try to do the optimization for you and you may not reach statistical significance.

Conclusion

That just about sums it up. The ad testing process that we use isn’t complicated or time-consuming, but it’s been shown to drive real results for our clients.

Do you have any tips on ad testing or do anything differently in your process? Leave a comment below!

Google Shopping is absolutely one of the best ways to get your products in front of your potential buyers. Shopping campaigns, particularly the Google Merchant and products feeds portion, take a little time to setup, but the return on ad spend (ROAS) is incredible once you get your campaigns tuned.

Google Shopping’s Biggest Advantage

Simplicity is the biggest advantage for ecommerce stores when it comes to Shopping campaigns.

Shopping campaigns are simple to setup. You choose from a few campaign settings, enter your budget, and you’re done. You don’t have to worry about writing ads, creating hundreds of ad groups, or anything like that. All of this is done for you.

You get to spend your time optimizing product bids and running your business.

However, the simplicity of Google Shopping campaigns also leads to the most common mistake that we see among new clients.

Ignoring Negative Keywords: The Biggest Google Shopping Mistake

Many advertisers don’t know how to use negative keywords in Google Shopping campaigns. We see it time and time again when we do an AdWords audit or take on a new client. You can enter negative keywords in Shopping campaigns just like you would in any other campaign.

Just because you don’t get to choose positive keywords (keywords you bid on, like in Search campaigns) doesn’t mean that you can’t enter negative keywords. You can easily make the argument that negative keywords are MORE important in Shopping campaigns because of the fact that you aren’t explicitly choosing what search terms your products show for.

What Are Search Terms

Before we dive deep into negative keywords, we need to make sure that everyone understands what search terms are. Search terms are the actual searches entered by Google users. It’s important to understand exactly the terms that customers are using because they often differ dramatically from what you would anticipate.

How To Find Search Terms in Shopping Campaigns

We’ve analyzed dozens of accounts where advertisers didn’t know that you could examine the search terms for a Shopping campaign, much less know where to find them and how to enter negative keywords.

AdWords can easily be overwhelming for newbies, especially navigation and finding specific features and tools. Thankfully, the new AdWords interface makes the navigation a little simpler. To find your search terms, navigate to the Shopping campaign in question, then choose Keywords. You’ll see 2 tabs here, one for Search Terms and one for Negative Keywords.

What To Look For In Your Search Terms Report

Once you’ve found the Search Terms report, you’ll want to look for any search terms that don’t make sense for the products that you’re offering. As you identify negative keywords that you want to add, don’t just check the box and add the negative right there, put them in a list so that you can add the keywords directly on the Negative Keywords screen.

Here are some great examples that I’ve seen recently that would make excellent negative keywords.

Brands that you don’t offer. If you see Reebok in your search terms, but you only sell Nike, then Reebok should be a negative.

Products that you don’t offer. If you’re selling products made out of poplar wood, then ‘poplar tree seedlings‘ should be a negative.

Search Terms that don’t convert well. I don’t recommend adding negatives for search terms that do fit your product offering unless you have substantial data to back it up. However, it’s quite common to see certain keywords eat a lot of your budget that just don’t convert well. You should add these as exact match negative keywords.

Exact Match vs Broad Match for Negative Keywords

I’m a big proponent of utilizing broad match for negative keywords. When adding negatives it’s important to think about not only the search terms that you’ve gotten traffic for already, but the ones that you’re not thinking of.

Using the above example, if you’re a store selling Nike shoes then you would want to add reebok as a broad match negative. That way any keyword containing ‘reebok‘ wouldn’t show.

Adding negatives from the Search Terms report in AdWords creates exact match negatives, which are too narrow in scope. If your search terms include ‘reebok running shoes‘ and ‘black reeboks‘ then it would be much easier to add the broad match negative keyword reebok than add exact match negatives for every term in the list.

Adding Your Negative Keywords

Once you have a list of the negative keywords that you want to use it’s time to add them. Click the Negative Keywords tab and enter your list. Again, I recommend going with broad match as much as possible, but there are circumstances where the other match types could make sense as well.

If your negative keywords apply to multiple campaigns then it might make sense to put those keywords in a negative keyword list. Just check the checkbox at the bottom of the keyword form to save your keywords to a list.

To add a negative keyword list to another campaign you would do the same process as above, but choose the “Use negative keyword list” option.

Next Steps

You will want to continually monitor your search terms and continue to add negative keywords as needed. I recommend looking at them on a bi-weekly basis. Put it on your calendar so that you won’t forget. It’s worth the effort.

What Did We Miss

Are there any other tips and tricks around Google Shopping negative keywords that we need to talk about? Let me know in the comments.

I think that AdWords labels are criminally underutilized. You can use them in so many ways and, at least for me, they are the key to an organized, successful campaign.

Here are a few of my favorite ways to use labels.

Ad Testing

One of the hallmarks of an effective PPC campaign is continuous testing. Testing keywords, testing bids, and, perhaps most importantly, testing ad copy.

AdWords labels are extraordinarily helpful here because they help keep your tests organized. When it comes to testing ad copy, my preference is to use a champion/challenger setup. I have an ad designated as a champion (the best performer) and each additional active ad is a challenger.

Depending on the number of impressions a particular ad group is getting I like to keep 2-3 ads running at a time.

The champion ad will keep the “Ad – Champion” label until I’ve identified a better performer. Once an ad is no longer the champion I apply a “Ad – Former Champion” label and pause it. The new champion ad gets the “Ad – Champion” label and you create new challenger ads. Rinse and repeat.

Landing Page Testing

Taking ad testing one step further allows you to test landing page performance in an organized fashion.

Take a look at this example setup. I’m testing 2 ad copies and 2 landing pages simultaneously, hence 4 ads. In this case we already had a landing page in place and were testing a new variation, so I labeled the ads going to the original page with “LP – Control” and the new landing page ads with “LP – some relevant identifier”.

A nice and tidy way to see how the various ads and landing pages are performing. If you weren’t using labels to track the landing page changes then it would be difficult to identify which ad points to which page without having to change the ad copy in some way.

Account Level Notes

I may be alone in this, but I like to use AdWords labels at all levels to make notes, reminders, explanations, etc. For example, if I want to pause a campaign for a couple of weeks I would apply a “Campaign – Pause until 7/4” or “Temp Pause” label.

Keywords

Admittedly this is one that I used to use a lot more than I do now, but it may be of benefit to you. In ad groups that have dozens of keywords I used to put labels on the best performing or most important keywords. Things like “KW – Important”, “KW – High Value”, or “KW – Needs Work”. The labels here are primarily for quickly finding the important keywords in a large list.

Over the last year I’ve started really focusing on much tighter ad groups, negating this need quite a bit. You could apply the same process at the ad group level if it makes sense.

API

Labels are also available to you through the AdWords API. You can use labels however you see fit, whether you’re using them to turn off/on campaigns with a certain label programmatically or you’re doing advanced reporting using label as a dimension. Going back to the landing page example from before, if you used the API you could automatically roll up landing page performance by label.

Other Common Use Cases

AdWords has a lot of recommendations for how to use labels. Some of the most common ones that I’ve seen in practice are labels that divide accounts between multiple PPC managers, manage seasonal campaigns and groups, and linking various ad groups or keywords together across multiple campaigns for reporting purposes.

Organize Your Labels

Labels are themselves used for organization, but I like to keep the labels organized as well. Did you notice how I tend to put the account level in the label name? “Ad – Champion”, “KW – High Value”, etc. That helps keep labels in some sort of order in the label dropdown, which is important as the number of labels really starts to grow.

Using Labels as a Dimension in Reporting

Using labels for organization is great, but it’s pointless if you can’t report on them. You can report on labels at each level (campaign, ad group, keyword, and ad) through the Dimensions tab.

Your Turn

How are you using labels? What awesome practices have you come up with?